


and in our travels

by TheDragonofHouseMormont



Series: while collecting the stars [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, it will be a series of letters written by the two of them, this will not be a typical fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 07:20:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5859550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDragonofHouseMormont/pseuds/TheDragonofHouseMormont
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'I'll weep at night, with stars I'll fight.'  Have I become Mad Maudlin, tearing apart the universe to reunite with her Tom?  I know in my heart that it would be foolish to claim the both of us were anything but mad."</p><p>Clara and the Doctor travel the universe in their own stolen Tardises, but they write letters to each other and meet in secret places and stolen moments, their timestreams forever intertwined. (An epistolary fic)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and in our travels

**Author's Note:**

> Though the prologue for this series (While Collecting the Stars, A Prologue) is not entirely necessary to read, it is recommended for clarity.  
> The title for this fic comes from "Dear Fellow Traveler" by Sea Wolf

[[Playlist](http://8tracks.com/gwendolynnby/and-in-our-travels)] [[Photoset](http://gwendolynnby.tumblr.com/post/138370346912/post-hell-bent-clara-and-the-doctor-travel-the)]

It was tucked under the front flap of a book on a shelf in Winston Churchill's study.  The book had been gathering dust for years, and he could tell from the way the cover seemed to bulge out ever so slightly from its spine that it was hiding something inside it.  Opening the book, he knew what the folded paper was before even seeing its contents.  He asked the Prime Minister if he had ever let a small woman with shoulder-length brown hair anywhere near these books, but the man had never seen her before.

There was no name, no salutation at all, nor any name in the closing.  There never was; they were careful to keep their identities out of it, lest someone else reads the letter before they find it.

LXXII

_Earth, 2011_

_I saw you today.  You were young and there were two of you.  We were in the American desert and I was there because I needed to be there._

_It all happened because Me and I landed in New York City in 1946.  I remember a lot of things from my echoes, all those versions of me that weren’t really me, but they were, weren’t they?  I remember crash landing on a planet in a pocket universe where I defeated the Great Intelligence before being killed for spare parts, I remember Paris in 1979, hearing the news of your trial on Gallifrey, dying in the London Underground but preventing the Great Intelligence from informing his younger self of the actions Jamie would take to stop his plan.  Since my ‘death’ these memories have become more numerous; I don’t sleep but I do dream and they seem to be slipping in._

_I remember the Dalek Asylum and that is why I recognized the couple that entered my diner.  They accused me of being an alien at first, said there was no way my diner could exist – not only because the style was nearly a decade too early (and an obvious tribute to such a style at that), but because they had been in that exact same diner in the year 2011.  I had intended to explain to them at least a little of what was going on, but instead I told them everything._

_That is how I found myself in Utah in 2011, serving up food to strangers for a week before the four of you showed up.  You were your bowtie self, only eleven hundred years old.  You all swapped stories and laughed, and had no idea who I was.  When you left, I followed you.  I watched you die on that beach and I almost thought that was it, but then I remembered The Teselecta – an echo of mine was part of the crew – and I knew everything would be fine._

_I returned to the diner before the others and accidentally ran into your 900 year old self.  You spoke to me, but you didn’t know me.  I suppose I should be used to that by now._

_I had no part to play in that story, perhaps my echoes did, but this version of me was just there to provide you and your friends with a roof to meet under, and only because it had already happened.  I had already been there._

_Perhaps the events that have led us here were always meant to happen.  Does that make sense?  The universe requires my death, but it also seems to require that I do not die just yet, for there are things that have already happened and can only continue to happen so long as I take my time facing the Raven.  I don’t know why it is the universe requires anything of me at all._

_But I’ll pay any price it places upon me, for look at what it has given me in return.  You stole from it, but I turned the theft into a bargain; I will give it my death so long as it gives me you.  So far it seems quite happy to make the deal._

_I don’t sleep, but I still dream; I suppose my brain needs to process all these new memories.  I see the end in my dreams.  I watch the stars go out, I watch the buildings crumble and the trees go up in flames “but hour by hour/they fell and faded—and the crackling trunks/extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.”  Are these dreams a warning?  A glimpse of the future?  Have I already failed in my task?_

_If I were a good person, I would have already died.  But every time I consider setting the course for Gallifrey, I feel the string around my dead heart tug and it pulls me in your direction.  My choice is to die and uphold the universe, or live frozen as I am and remain in existence with you.  I’m beginning to think there really isn’t a choice at all.  I don’t think either of us has ever existed without the other and I don’t think we could do so now even if we had the notion to try.  When I dream I taste copper in my mouth and feel thick dust on my palms and then I come back to reality and I am as clean and flawless as the day of my death._

_And every time, I dream of you.  You are always there, at the end of everything.  We stand at the center of it, hand in hand, and it is so hard to keep my eyes on the destruction surrounding us when I can just turn my head and look upon your face.  In those moments I find it hard to care._

_This is a dangerous game we are playing.  It doesn’t matter how innocuous the destinations I set appear to be, nor how random, because something in the way my Tardis hums, the way the stars look when I step outside her doors, I can feel that this is a path.  Every destination, every adventure, brings me one step closer to you.  I fear I am tearing my way through the universe, but I just can’t seem to stop.  “I'll weep at night, with stars I'll fight.” Have I become Mad Maudlin, tearing apart the universe to reunite with her Tom? I know in my heart that it would be foolish to claim the both of us are anything but mad._

_Ashildr never says a word to me about it.  I like to think that it’s because she knows something I don’t, but it’s more likely that, as someone who has lived to the end of the universe, the concept isn’t one that bothers her all that much anymore.  The thought is frightening as sometimes I will go days having to rely entirely on her to keep me in my place.  But I must believe that, between the two of us, we can hold this together.  Three of us really, since I know you are on your end fighting your own battles._

_And they are battles, aren’t they?  I will see you again; I don’t know which you or at what point in our timestream it will be, just that it will happen; it will always happen and it will always be difficult.  I just know that it cannot be the you I am writing to, not yet.  No matter how much time has passed, I’m still not confident I could walk away.  I’ve done it twice now, and that has been hard enough._

**Author's Note:**

> Clara references two poems in this letter, Darkness by Lord Byron and Mad Maudlin's Search.  
> Though I have already written half of the next letter, this fic is not a typical story and won't be updated regularly, only as the idea for letters comes to me. There will be another fic in this series soon though, which will be a murder mystery reunion.


End file.
